


dream of me

by firetan



Category: Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Drabble, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Suicide Attempt, Tumblr Prompt, let me know if I need to tag anything else, only very lightly implied but it's there so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-23 00:24:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9631481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firetan/pseuds/firetan
Summary: the one where you can talk to your soulmate in dreams.





	

Irina used to dream. 

When she was young, she would dream of a large old tree. The same tree every time, and she memorized the knots and burls of its bark the same way she memorized how to tie the knots required for the rigging of the Amor Almar. Even in the autumn and winter, the tree’s leaves would be full and green, providing shade from the sunlight just shy of blinding that always glowed overhead.

She had a friend at the tree, too. A boy, older than her — old enough to be a young man, perhaps? Irina didn’t really care, since such things rarely bothered her and she didn’t get on well with children her age anyways. But the boy at the tree was kind, and quiet, and smart. He taught her letters and read aloud to her from the books he would always bring, and though his voice was tranquil his eyes would always smile at her.

They didn’t always read, especially as she grew older. Sometimes they would talk — he would tell her about books he had found, or things his friend had told him that day (Irina found that she wasn’t sure what to think of this friend, who seemed all together too much like a storm for her taste). She would regale him with tales of the ship, stories of Peggy’s newest attempt to get Callum in her bed or a new song her mother had taught her. Sometimes, she could even make him laugh, and those moments were ones she treasured long after she awoke.

One thing they never told each other were their names. Irina knew what the dreams really were — soulmate dreams — as her mother had been sure to explain when Irina (five years old at the time) told her joyfully about the new friend she met under a tree in her sleep. And she was sure the boy — her soulmate — knew too. But they both had reasons not to tell, and he always seemed unhappy to be asked, so she let it be.

They had to call each other something, though, so she proposed code names with all of the childish delight that such a concept entailed. That was one of the moments that earned a bout of startled laughter from her friend, and he quickly agreed to the concept. The next time they met — she didn’t dream every night, though many — they made formal bows and barely concealed smiles as they introduced themselves as ‘Agate’ and ‘Paz’. (Irina knew her name meant peace in a long-ago language, so she just took the same meaning from the language of the sea).

She and ‘Agate’ shared dreams for many years, through winter and summer, stormy season after stormy season. He would braid her hair while she told him about dancing the tango to Peggy’s increasingly bawdy lyrics, and she would massage the stiff muscles in his back while he read aloud from whatever book he had brought with him that night. She was ten, and thought she couldn’t possibly be happier.

Then, there was the fire.

Irina would never, _ever_ regret running into that building, even with the ugly scars covering her skin and her left eye sightless and cloudy, because every one of those thirteen children she had carried out of the flames would have a life and dreams and people like ‘Agate’ to make laugh and smile, and because of her that hadn’t been stolen away. She would never regret making one more trip for the young man who had been trapped inside with them, because the sight of his soulmate running from the bucket brigade to wrap his arms around him and weep into his hair had almost distracted her from the agony of her burns before she passed out.

She fell in and out of fever dreams for nine days, never sure if she was awake or asleep. Callum had taken over the captainship temporarily so her mother could sit at her bedside and change the dressing on her wounds, draping cold cloths over her forehead to cool her temperature. In the dreams, she was no more coherent, but there were still cool hands carding through her hair as she whimpered in pain and there was still a gentle voice speaking to her as she shivered and trembled. 

Always behind her eyes, though, there were flames. And when her fever finally broke and she began to recover, she stopped dreaming.

Her mother reassured her that it didn’t mean ‘Agate’ had died, that it may have just been her mind trying to protect her from the effects of what she had been through. That the lack of dreams was her mind’s way of locking up the memory of flames and burning and screams. 

Irina wished she would see flames behind her eyes and feel them licking at her calves, if only it meant she would be able to see her friend — her _soulmate_ — again. If it meant she would be able to talk to him when she _needed_ someone to talk to — when her mother disappeared, when she sailed the world and returned home, when she woke up in a strange room with blood crusted on her legs and only a sickening haze of memories to explain what had happened the night before. She would spend every day on fire, if only she could retreat into her dreams and talk to ‘Agate’ about everything instead of it coiling up and poisoning her from the inside out.

When she slit her wrists in the quiet of her upstairs bedroom and fell into darkness, only poisons and paints to keep her company, she thought she could hear an almost-familiar voice speaking to her. Telling her to hold on. To wait.

_“Come to the Summit, Paz.”_

She wasn’t dreaming, everything was dark, but a part of her knew he was there. “Why?”

 _“Please. I can’t—”_ His voice broke off, though she didn’t know why. Emotion? Restraint? He had always been composed, and she’d appreciated that about him. Smart, too, so if he wanted her to go to the Summit… 

“Alright.” Stuffy nobles and more empty talk, maneuvering and posturing and false masks everywhere, but he had _asked_ and Irina found that after eight years of silence, she wasn’t particularly willing to refuse.

“I’ll go.”

As something began to tug her back to consciousness, his voice grew faint but still just as clear.  _“I’ll be waiting.”_

She woke up with bandaged wrists and a weeping father, and silently made a promise to herself. She no longer dreamed, she hadn’t seen the tree at night since she was ten years old, but she didn’t need the dreams to come to her any longer. 

She was going to take hold of her life and find them.

**Author's Note:**

> This one's a bit darker since it's from Irina's perspective.


End file.
